Sex And The Secret Service

Let’s face it, America – or at least that part of the country enmeshed in the news-entertainment business – loves to condemn a sex scandal.

Politically, sex scandals are an chancy business. Republicans, for obvious reasons, would prefer their party to remain free of the taint of scandal, and Democrats would wish the same. Of course, when the sexually wicked stumble, partisans in either party, oblivious to Proverbs, rejoice when their enemy falls. For all the talk about sexual liberation, we lag moral miles behind Europe – especially France which, in matters involving sex between consenting politicians, pursues a laissez faire policy. But like the gentle rain that falleth on the just and the unjust, any political party can be stricken by sexual scandal.

A scandal that in some sense involves a president is the most troubling. It was not until well after the manufactured fantasy of John Kennedy’s Camelot ran aground on the rocks of reality that people began to realize the extent of the president’s sexual athleticism – even though he had a really, really bad back. At one point, the young and charismatic president had become involved with a lady, a potential Morgan Le Fay of Camelot, who had been connected to Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana. In the course of Mr. Kennedy’s three year extramarital affair with Judith Exner, Mr. Kennedy’s bed partner was used to pass on to Mr. Giancana classified CIA plans for the assassination of Fidel Castro. An ensuing Bay of Pigs invasion involving Mafia assistance proved to be a spectacular failure.

Democrats this year are waging a rhetorical war on Republicans who they insist are waging a war on women; yet in the recent past, it is Democratic presidents rather than their Republican counterparts on the other side of the political aisle who have tended to use women as their sexual footstools. Somehow, one cannot imagine President Richard (Nietzsche) Nixon, whose political ethics certainly were pragmatic, or other Republican presidents such as Gerald Ford or the Bushes, père et fils, or Ronny Reagan … you know… fooling around in the White House.

Back in the good old boy days, when the media thought it improper to comment on the sexual exploits of presidents, the chief business of the Secret Service was to protect the president from bullets and what used to be called in the administration of President Bill Clinton“bimbo eruptions.” Until a stained blue dress hit the public fan in the midst of an impeachment hearing, Mr. Clinton vehemently insisted that his relationships with his several Morgan Le Fays were strictly platonic or the result of the fevered imaginations of his sexual targets.

The role played by Senator Joe Lieberman in the Monica Lewinsky affairis generally forgotten by all but an appreciative Mr. Clinton. It was Mr. Lieberman, by roundly condemning Mr. Clinton in the accents of an appalled Cotton Mather, who saved Mr. Clinton’s presidential hide.

In the wake of the Secret Service scandal involving agents whose principle business it is to protect the president from bullets and bimbo eruptions, Mr. Lieberman once again helpfully has stepped forward. The president himself, it must be said, so far is free of taint; the funny business between agents and Colombian prostitutes occurred well before Mr. Obama arrived in Columbia to spread cheer among Latin Americans. Still, congressional committees are on the prowl. Questions have been raised; in particular, did the White House advance team know about the hanky-panky with legal prostitutes some of whom may have been… well, younger than past Democratic presidential consorts?

The investigation of the secret service has now uncovered a twelfth agent who, significantly, was not staying at Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, where eleven other Secret Service personnel stayed, but at the Hilton, the president’s hotel in Cartagena.

Said Mr. Lieberman, "The Hilton is significant because that's where President Obama was going to stay. Now we don't know at this point that what the twelfth agent is being charged with and why he's been put administrative leave. It just gets more troubling. To act as these people did in Cartagena as if they were college kids on spring break, it is reprehensible."

While adamantly refusing to supply details of an internal investigation, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has announcedthat White House legal counsel has concluded no White House staff engaged in any "misconduct" in Cartagena.

Here is Mr. Lieberman hashing the matter over with Bob Schieffer, the host of CBS’s widely watched "Face the Nation" Sunday broadcast:

When Mr. Schieffer asked Mr. Lieberman whether the White House Office of Advance staff might be involved in the scandal, Mr. Lieberman that he had no indication of such involvement but suggested thatthe office “ought to be launching their own internal review of all white house personnel, advance teams and the rest, who were in Cartagena."